Georgia must fix prison corruption crisis - from the AJC editorial board

On the face of it, the mission of the Georgia Department of Corrections seems simple enough: “To protect Georgians by operating secure facilities and providing opportunities for offender rehabilitation.”

But, as our investigation has revealed, the very opposite is happening.

The department – and the state that funds it – have failed miserably.

Our series has uncovered an operation that’s in crisis, presenting a real and present danger to all Georgians.

Inside our state’s prisons, crime runs amok. And its reach runs far beyond razor-wire fences, endangering and exploiting innocent people across the state.

Guards are scarce and inmates essentially run too many cellblocks.

Prisoners have been known to order killings on the outside.

And webs of corrupt and illegal activity – drug, contraband and extortion rings among them – operate with little hindrance. Far too often, this illegal activity is actively enabled by corrupt prison staff.

As a result of this widespread corruption, rehabilitation and recovery goals remain elusive.

These violent and destructive results exact a terrible emotional and financial toll on family members of nearly 50,000 inmates and other, innocent Georgians who are affected.

This situation is intolerable.

It is deadly.

And it must change.

But that won’t happen until leaders at the Gold Dome admit that we are facing a crisis. It’s a problem that won’t be solved only with self-serving comments about being tough on crime.

While lawmakers have condemned the terrible conditions at the Fulton County Jail, they have remained silent about their own mess at our state’s prisons.

It’s time for concerted and sincere action toward reform.

Unlike Fulton County, which is working toward solutions, the Georgia Department of Corrections seems to operate as though there’s “nothing to see here, folks.” The department’s lack of transparency about its serious inadequacies is stunning – and should be unacceptable to anyone who values good government, public safety and human decency.

At minimum, GDC must become more transparent about what’s going on behind bars. Things like regularly posting on its website information about prison incidents and conditions. Without that kind of openness, there’s no real accountability.

When the Legislature resumes in January, lawmakers would also do well to quickly appoint an independent group to provide oversight that’s lacking now. With the right information that GDC now keeps under tight wrap, such an entity could assess and identify solutions to our prison system failings.

There are surely other ideas worth pursuing. What matters is that something substantive must be done quickly to help safeguard Georgians.

The criminals inside our state’s prisons are likely sneering at where Georgia stands now.

Smith State Prison inmate Nathan Weekes has bragged as much.

He allegedly led a large contraband scheme from behind bars that’s connected with the mistaken-identity murder of an 88-year-old man in the prison’s hometown. Weekes’ reported operation also led to criminal charges against the prison warden for his part in the scheme.

Weekes bragged in social media videos about his prowess at running illegal activity behind bars. “(Expletive) don’t stop cuz the (expletive) door locked,” he proclaimed.

Sadly, he’s right, our investigation found.

But such wrongdoing must come to an end. It is too costly and dangerous for innocent Georgians who are suffering the harm of gang and other criminal activity in our neighborhoods that’s controlled from cellblocks. Not to mention those inmates who want to pay their debt to society and simply live to go free again one day.

They face too-long odds in doing so at this point.

Yes, it’s the height of naivete to think that prisons – as warehouses of some of society’s most dangerous people – can be made perfectly safe. That said, it should be unacceptable to have a situation where Georgia’s prisons are “awash in blood,” as the AJC’s reported.

Between 2020 and the end of 2022, at least 90 people were slain in Georgia’s prisons, three times the number from the previous three-year period. In 2022, at least 43 state prisoners killed themselves.

And between 2019 and 2022, at least 49 Georgia prisoners died of drug overdoses. In 2018, that number was 2.

The outrageously high toll of homicides, assaults and drug overdose deaths in Georgia’s prisons is exacerbated by understaffing that our report describes as “massive.” That’s an accurate descriptor of a situation where 70% or more of the correctional officer jobs were vacant last August at 8 state prisons.

GDC reports that annual turnover for correctional officers in Georgia is about 40%. That number’s improved from recent years, which may be related to pay boosts for state employees and GDC’s efforts to recruit workers.

Whatever is being done to boost staffing and poor working conditions isn’t enough.

Many other states, including Alabama, pay their correctional officers more than Georgia does.

In Florida, some 300 National Guard members have worked in that state’s prisons since 2022 to help fill critical labor shortages.

Georgia could direct some of the state’s sizable budget surplus toward additional pay increases and other workplace improvements, especially for frontline prison staffers.

As we reported last month, “The brutality inside Georgia’s prisons exposes how little control correctional officers may have, especially when entire units are staffed by a single guard – if that.”

That reality has led to scenarios where guards, sometimes working alone, have watched fatal attacks on prisoners without immediately trying to intervene.

So much for being tough on crime in Georgia.

It’s intolerable that so few prison guards are walking cellblocks, creating a dangerous situation for both officers and inmates.

With such chronic understaffing, it’s no wonder that prisoners can be dead in their cells for hours, or even days, before anyone notices. That makes a deceitful mockery of official processes that call for regularly checking on high-risk, often mentally ill, prisoners.

Adding to the problem is an appalling number of corrupt staffers working in our prisons. Their “dirty” activity endangers honest employees and prisoners alike. And it aids the criminal enterprises that endanger Georgians.

As we reported in our first installment last September, “the overwhelming dynamic facing the Department of Corrections is this: As fast as dirty officers are arrested, new ones take their places.”

Some 425 GDC employees have been arrested since 2018 for crimes on the job. “Those who were prosecuted rarely faced prison time. Some weren’t prosecuted at all,” our reporting found.

It’s no wonder that contraband abounds in supposedly secure prisons, sometimes even flown in by drones.

Cellphones. Meth. Ecstasy. Hydrocodone. All are among items routinely smuggled into prisons.

And it’s not only low-ranking correctional officers who’re yielding to temptation. The lure of well-paid wrongdoing reaches far up the organizational chart at GDC. For instance, high-ranking officers, including a warden and a food service director, have been charged with criminal wrongdoing.

From a purely economic standpoint, corruption pays well in Georgia’s prisons. An inmate running an embezzlement scheme reportedly could pay up to $10,000 for a smuggled-in cellphone. He could afford it, given his ill-gotten gains. He admitted to stealing $11 million from an investment account, using a cellphone to pull off the crime from inside prison.

Many of the prison officers in closest contact with inmates are young and have had personal financial problems, such as civil debt judgments, evictions or bankruptcies. Others hired into the system had questionable personal relationships with prisoners either before they were hired – or that began afterward.

Taken together, it is a shameful, dangerous mess.

It’s one that lawmakers must move quickly to begin resolving.

To do otherwise keeps Georgians at risk and in peril.

The Editorial Board.